2 
Of Two Land-grants, issued by King JIastin. [No. 1, 
Sykes, and that “ they seem to have been originally procured from 
Nagode in Bundalkand.” Major Kittoe, when about to leave this 
country, presented them to me ; and by me they were made over to 
the Benares College, of which they are now the property. 
It is chiefly in respect of their incidence on the litigated topic of 
the Gupta era, that Hastin’s proclamations possess any value. 
Professor Wilson surmised that both exhibit the same date ; and 
herein he mistook, there being two dates. Neither of them, verbally 
considered, did he unriddle aright, as I shall evidence ; and yet, 
by happy accident, a wrong theory conducted him to the equivalent, 
in words, of the later.* 
* “ One copy has ^vjTtT^ ; the other, Putting them 
together, the probable reading is that is to say, “ in the 
163rd year.” So writes Professor Wilson, whose romauization I have, for 
uniformity, turned into Devanagari. 
As for the words given above as first, there appear, on the plates, after the 
initial two complex characters, unmistakeably and which it will not 
answer to pass by as if they were superfluities. Mr. Thomas gives them, in his 
decipherments, in their archaic delineation, but resolves only one of them, the 
second, which he takes to be for -g. Again, what next follows, the Professor’s tf]- ; 
is, past all gainsay, ; an d, in place of in his — and so of gin his 
sJ^if — I read, without a misgiving, as he also did eventually. 
The first symbol of the mislection -g-qai, and the first of the mislection 
are still to be disposed of. In the originals they have identically the same 
aspect, that of almost a square, with a hook, curved forwards, depending from 
its lower right-hand angle. Mr. Thomas explains it, in one of the grants, as 
^ ; in the other, as which it nearly resembles. My incurs small risk of 
being impugned. After all, Professor Wilson held it as probable that vf — 
which the shape of the old ^ is distantly like — was intended ; with nothing 
subjoined, however, but with surmounting it. For his Tf only substitute, in 
my readings, and the figures 156 and 163 will come out, in the two inscrip- 
tions respectively. Concerning the first letter of the tentative it remains 
to be said that it has no representative whatever in the two pairs of words which 
are fused into the tertium quid now conclusively invalidated. 
One and the same person having originated both the grants, we could not 
expect to find them divided by any considerable interval of time. Independently 
of all that has been said above, the date of what I call the earlier contains a 
manifest inaccuracy. This I venture to heal ; and in such a manner as to do no 
